‘discovery+’, an exciting D2C streaming app satiates the unmet need of a differentiated product, offering premium real-life entertainment.
Ahead of the auspicious occasion of Ram Navami, discovery+revisits the sacred geography of one of the greatest stories in the world in Legends of the Ramayana with Amish, a compelling docu series narrated by bestselling award-winning writer and diplomat, Amish Tripathi. Replete with stunning visuals and unique stories, this series produced by Wide Angle Films unfolds the mystery around Lord Ram’s thrilling Ayana (journey), starting 7th April 2022.
At the launch event Medianews4U spoke to Megha Tata- Managing Director- South Asia – Discovery Inc. on the show and the vision of Discovery+ in 2022-23
‘The Legends of Ramayana’, is just not a Mythological, but a amalgamation of Faith, Philosophy and Science is what made Discovery green light this project?
Discovery as a brand has always stood for content which is informative yet entertaining. But Discovery+ gave us an opportunity to add the Plus to what Discovery was creating all this while. There is so much content we wanted to produce but could not as we did not have a relevant platform. Since the last year or so we have really pumped up the volume in creating original content out of India. When this story idea came to us, we felt that this was perfect in multiple ways. Firstly, everyone knows about Ramyana, not the intricacies and deep ends but the broad basics, but all of us have watched the Ramayana Serial on Sunday morning and everything stopped, reading Amarchitra Katha. We may have not read the book Ramayana, but heard and read various adaptations of the Ramayana.
This story has been in our eco system forever, and when this opportunity came, the thought was, what if we did a travelogue? What if we were to go through literally from Ayodhya to Srilanka, the journey of Sri Ram, Lakshman and SitaMaa and the story follows them and there are places we genuinely know that it exists. Many would have gone there, and there is information in bits and pieces, so we said let’s connect the dots of the journey from Ayodhya to Srilanka. But this cannot be my vision of the Ramayana, the story is either black or white with no shades of grey in it. We had to bring authenticity and credibility and that came through from researchers, Scientists, Geologists that Amish spoke about and the entire R&D which was done before we started to shoot was very strong. The Discovery content team spent months to put the R&D together.
The story has not taken any sides; we are showing it as it is its either black or white. There is no individual POV or a different version. This is how it was and is supported with facts and Amish was the cherry on the cake, there could not have been another person to lead the story and t has come out really well. There are certain parts which are a WOW moment for the viewer.
The past two years have been a very difficult time, how did you manage to put together this show?
It has been very challenging for the content team and the Wide Angle Films, the Production house had to really work very hard in co-ordinating on many issues. The travel and permissions etc. thanks to covid was a challenge, but eventually all is well that end well.
What is Discovery offering in 2022?
This year you are going to see lots of original content, it is 5 times the original content we have created in the last few years. The Legend of Ramayana is the big one, we launched ‘India’s Ultimate Warrior’ with VidhyutJamval last month, and in a couple of months we some fabulous shows in different genres, and the core genre we are focusing is adventure, crime, history, dark mysteries, investigations. We are catering to all section of our audiences. ‘The Annie murder case’ was one of our top shows.
Vision for 2022 – 2023?
Create the best stories we can, which us our focus and we stand for, bring in content which is richer, and there is lots happening in the next few months and we want to continue that momentum.
We are seeing a surge on OTT, as a SVOD platform is you seeing a raise in subscriptions?
We have had a fantastic run actually right now, I think globally including discovery Plus our numbers are around 22 million, but Discovery+ has a big role to play in that and India had a big role to play in that growth story as well. I think we were right there Right Place Right Time, and that helped and worked in our favour. I also think that TV in India is not going anywhere in the near future and the combination of TV and OTT is what has worked for us and most other broadcasters who have both TV and digital. We have had a good run and always aspire to be better and that is where we are headed.
